On October 6, Barnard College hosted Year of Elections Around the World: Post-Election Community Forum to offer “real-time updates” and discuss the impact of the US election on local and national politics.

The day after the US Presidential Election, Barnard College hosted a Community Forum to analyze, historicize, and make sense of the implications of the results for various communities in and outside of the country. Although Arizona’s ballots are not fully counted yet, Former President Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election with 301 electoral votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 226 electoral votes. The Republicans captured the Senate with 52 seats to the Democrats’ 46, and three seats are yet to be determined. The House of Representatives currently has 212 Republicans and 200 Democrats, with 218 seats required by a party to gain control. 

This was the second event in Barnard’s Year of Elections Around the World Series featuring roundtable conversations by faculty members to discuss relevant interdisciplinary issues amidst a year of international political change. The event was moderated by Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow Professor of Political Science, with presentations analyzing the election results from Umbreen Bhatti (BC ’00), Professor Jennie Kassanoff, Professor Michael G. Miller, and Professor Katherine Krimmel.

Michael G. Miller, an Associate Professor of Political Science and an analyst on the Fox News decision desk, began the forum by offering his analysis of current results and describing relevant shifts in voting patterns. After working as a campaign manager in his twenties, Miller got to see structural problems with American elections firsthand and wanted to develop tools for campaign and electoral reform. This directly lends itself to his academic research as well as his analyst position, where his work primarily revolves around making “sure everyone can vote.”

In a media reporting channel like Fox, analysts at the decision desk assess data using statistics to make predictions about election results. Miller described Tuesday’s race as “not a hard [one] to call” as he and others at his desk predicted the presidential result by 9 pm. This year, while the polls before November 5 gave “little clarity on the outcome,” he knew that battleground states (states that are not reliably Republican or Democrat) would likely all swing in one direction because of historical patterns. 

Within these battleground states, there are specific swing “barometer” counties that he established at the beginning of the night to compare Vice President Harris’ performance against Former President Trump with President Biden’s in 2020. He concluded that Harris underperformed Biden in “almost every county” in the United States and with “almost every demographic.”

According to Miller, Americans were “voting less along racial lines” than in past elections, with a rightward shift for almost all racial minorities but particularly with Hispanic voters. There was, however, a notable “gender” split which was widest among young voters, with young women supporting Vice President Harris relatively more than young men. One of the most significant dividers was education level, with a staggering 62% of voters who never attended college supporting Former President Trump, according to NBC News.

Political Science Professor Katherine Krimmel built on Miller’s statistical analysis by providing some of the primary reasons for broad shifts in this election. When voters were surveyed by news outlets about the issues they considered most significant when choosing their president, the economy was consistently a priority. Views of the economy during the Biden administration were more negative than Krimmel predicted, with post-COVID-19 inflation hitting Americans particularly hard. Even as inflation cooled, both Biden’s and Harris’ popularity failed to rebound as many continued to struggle with soaring food and housing prices. “It’s a bad time to be an incumbent party,” said Krimmel, referring to the low approval ratings of governments around the world during the pandemic.

In addition to her insights on the economy, she also provided her thoughts on the narratives that are emerging after the election has been settled, pulling from her academic research on political polarization. Krimmel urged the audience to “exercise caution in consuming and contributing to” narratives that overwhelmingly give credit to or assign blame on a single demographic of voters for the outcome of the election. 

Instead of pointing to one of these groups, it is important to acknowledge the broad rightward shift across all demographic categories and across the country, said Krimmel. We are “unlikely to understand” these major changes by focusing on a narrative centered on a “particular group or place.”

Washington Post’s infographic, colored with a “sea of red lines,” demonstrates the increase in Former President Donald Trump’s popularity since 2020, with a shift towards the GOP in almost all counties, including New York’s boroughs and Los Angeles County which historically lean democratic. Interestingly enough, a notable exception to this is in Atlanta and other counties “along the path of Hurricane Helene,” according to Miller.

In addition to understanding the statistics and demographic shifts of the current election, it is crucial to historicize some of its patterns in America’s political history. Jennie Kassanoff, Adolph S. and Effie Ochs Professor of American Studies and History and Professor of English, recently finished a book on the literary history of the Voting Rights Act and situated current narratives about election fraud within the larger record of political contestation in the United States.

Regardless of what the two candidates did or did not do in their campaigns, it was “clear” that “last night, voters just wanted a particular outcome.” Kassanoff believed that Trump is at times “impervious to factual evidence,” along with “a lot of the American electorate.” She cited the events on January 6 as evidence of this, claiming that no amount of investigation could unsettle the former president’s belief in his victory. By “immediately calling on television viewers to doubt their own eyes,” he encouraged people to follow their gut and “not trust the evidence.”

However, Kassanoff did not believe Trump and his supporters possess a radical or historically unprecedented trait; she pointed out that “imperviousness to evidence” is part of a longstanding tradition in the United States. This imperviousness occurs particularly often in cases of racial stigma. In 1965, amidst “abundant evidence” of racial discrimination in voting in the South, there were debates about the Voting Rights Act in the Senate. Opponents claimed this amounted to “guilt by statistic,” implying that numerical data was being used unfairly to “guilt” them into conceding their point.

After Kassanoff’s presentation, the panelists answered questions from the audience, including concerns about the makeup of Congress and the state of reproductive rights, among other topics. To start, Umbreen Bhatti, Director of the Athena Center for Leadership, spoke more on education as a polarizing factor in the election. She believes that while institutions of higher education are important places for developing political opinions, many Americans rely on much more than what they’ve learned in textbooks or in the classroom. People determine their political affiliations based on tangible elements in their lives, such as their economic situation.

It is particularly true to recognize the importance of multiple sources of information, especially when considering the many Americans without a college degree who “feel that the Democrats look down on them,” Miller said. However, he believed that meeting people where they are at with messaging and policy and showing genuine interest in their needs would make this base “gettable.” Without doing these things, he claimed the Democrats would be largely “unsuccessful” in breaking through to these voters.

The conversation then pivoted to the makeup of Congress and the House of Representatives as well as their impact on the system of checks and balances that holds up the American government. Given that much of the House race is still undecided, she explained the two possible outcomes of this election: a divided government or a unified Republican government. While a unified government “seems attractive” in certain ways, said Krimmel, the Democrats in the Senate will still maintain the ability to filibuster and push back against bills they deem egregious.

There is also a marked difference in the focus of a particular political party when they are in the majority or minority party. According to Krimmel, majority parties tend to focus on governance, because if “things aren’t going well,” it is easy to see who is at fault. On the other hand, minority parties focus more on messaging and less on their governance. Even when one party is in control of the branches of government, Krimmel claimed that checks and balances can be maintained if the party exercises forbearance, or a level of restraint, in their decision-making.

In addition to Republican control of the Senate and likely Republican control of the House, Miller predicted that a Republican Supreme Court will remain for “most of our adult lives” as a “direct consequence of these past elections.” The current makeup of the court is six Republicans to three Democrats, and he expects Justices Alito and Thomas to resign under the upcoming Trump administration so that the Former President can appoint younger Republicans in their place. If Justice Sotomayor, a Democrat, does “not resign in the next two weeks” under the Biden administration, he predicts that she too will be replaced under Republican leadership. This would lead to a seven-to-two split of the Supreme Court along party lines.

Under a unified government, Miller believes that a nationwide abortion ban would not be completely “out of the question.” However, Democrats would definitely attempt to filibuster a bill of this nature and the Republicans would “likely suffer in midterm elections.” For any students struggling to make sense of the future of reproductive rights and needing a space to process these changes, Bhatti reminded the audience that the Athena Center would continue to be an open space.

Regardless of who wins an election in any given year, change in politics can be a difficult thing to adjust to. For the event’s closing activity, each member of the audience was asked to share an emotion or concept that resonated with them in the past few days. I will leave you with my favorite: a call for mutual support and kindness as we navigate political shifts. In the words of Grace Lee Boggs, “the only way to survive is by taking care of one another.”